On a plane home from LA in 2005
after a long trip away travelling around and spending about a year's savings on an entire month getting drunk and sleeping on couches, I found myself next to a Brit for the flight home. After a month in Sherman land I was grateful to have a chat with someone sane and we were soon talking bollocks and enjoying the complimentaries.

Poor guy really seemed to be having a crap time of it, bless him. He was investing pretty much all of his time in a band that wasn't doing brilliantly well - possibly because, as I told him, they'd chosen a blandly forgettable and mildly pretentious name for it. Curious as to how an umemployed "musician" could afford to fly halfway around the world I asked what he'd been up to in LA.

"Visiting my wife and kid," he said.

"Shit, I'm sorry," I said. "Did you guys break up?"

"Oh no," he replied. "She's over there working. Recording a new album."

"Interesting," I said. "She must be doing alright! Might I have heard of her?"

"Maybe," he said. "Sophie Ellis-Bextor?"

Heard of her?! I briefly kept photo of her, clipped from the NME, in my wallet when I was 15! My companion was Richard Jones, bassist with The Feeling, mere weeks before the release of My Little World and subsequent chart-topping success. So you could say things worked out alright for him. Jones himself was a lovely bloke; he even wrote his own top trump for me.

Although I still think "The Feeling" is a bland and pretentious band name.
( pineapplecharm D d M Y, H:i, Sat 7 Dec 2013, 16:54, 3 replies)

Did you ask whether she looks like a cat at both ends?

( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Sat 7 Dec 2013, 18:39, closed)

Ahahahahahahaha!

( Pig Bodine., Sat 7 Dec 2013, 19:15, closed)

I just lolled so hard at this I dun a guff.

( BraynDedd Natasha Kaplinsky's labia majora, Sat 7 Dec 2013, 19:29, closed)